Jack Puts Me Through My Paces [open post]

[summerdude]

"Señor, you really should practice more," Jack says, as Magnus rearranges his mental notes and sighs.

(Anyone else might think Magnus is just lying back on a bench on the grounds, staring at the sky, lost in thought. And technically, he is. But he's working hard!!! He's trying to sort out everyone he's encountered so far!!!)

"You're right," Magnus groans. Being in a weird Mansion with no way out, no established Battle Practice, and no pressing quests to go on is not an excuse to let his limited fighting skills fall by the wayside. He hauls himself upright and shoves his (still largely blank) notebook into his backpack.

Twenty minutes later, he's secured a practice sword from some random closet or another in the Mansion. It's dull steel, not sentient, and heavy in his hands.

"Perfect," Jack decides, so Magnus tramps back out to the spacious lawn, one sword in each hand. Checking to make sure no one is directly in harm's way, he releases Jack and brings the dull training sword up, ready to parry whatever attack Jack decides to throw at him.

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[summerdude]

Magnus can feel himself working up a sweat. It's not a particularly hot day, but between the sun and the exertion, it's enough to warm a guy up. Sagramore is fun to spar with. Kind of like -- well, none of Magnus's hallmates really use swords; Alex has her garrote wire and shapeshifting, Halfborn has his battle-axe, TJ has his union rifle with the bone-steel bayonet; Mallory has her knives. But if any of them did wield a greatsword and also couldn't be accidentally killed, Magnus imagines fighting them would feel like this.

So he decides to play around some more. He hops nimbly onto a decorative... boulder? Statue? Roundish rock that stands about three feet above the ground, knocking Jack out of the way with a move that one would typically use to disarm an opponent. There's a way for people who don't have einherji dexterity and strength to climb up, too, though it might require a little more than just a simple jump. "Come at me, bro," he tells Sagramore, eyes twinkling.

[sagramore]

He laughs, pleased. "You're light on your feet," scrambling up the boulder with considerably less dexterity.

[summerdude]

"It's nothing," Magnus says. It's not false modesty, precisely: this is par for the course for an einherjar. "A lot of my friends can fly." He extends a hand to help Sagramore up the rest of the way, should Sagramore choose to use it.

[sagramore]

He takes it and pulls himself up, shifting his sword to just one hand.

"A few months ago that would have surprised me, but no longer."

[summerdude]

"Yeah, this place is wild, huh?" Magnus asks. "Have you gotten used to it?"

[sagramore]

"I'd say more or less, but it seems like tempting fate. I've been happy here so far, though."

[summerdude]

"Yeah," Magnus says, with a little sigh. "I miss Alex and all my friends a lot, but it's nice to get a break from Battle Practice and quests. And the Mansion certainly doesn't suck."

[sagramore]

That makes him laugh again. "I'd say that word for word, but Dinadin instead of Alex."

[summerdude]

"Oh!" Magnus says. "Is Dinadin your... person, then?"

[sagramore]

"No, my best friend. More or less. My person is here. Alex is yours, then?"

[summerdude]

"Yeah," Magnus says. The goofy little grin he gets every time he thinks about Alex crosses his face. Then Sagramore's other words register. "Yours is here! Wow. Did they come with you?"

[sagramore]

"No, I met him here."

[summerdude]

"Oh, that's so cool," Magnus says. He's a little disappointed -- if he can't leave, it would be nice if he could figure out a way to get Alex here -- but he also likes to hear that people are forming connections here. He's a guy who digs community, what can he say? "What's he like?"

[sagramore]

"Oh, Christ." Sagramore's voice pitches softer without him even realizing it. "He's very brave and very curious and very kind. He comes from a court where I suspect everyone is always plotting against everyone else, and he's too good for it -- as soon as he had the chance to be open he was, and he likes every new thing there is in the world. You'll see him about, he's always on some sort of project, he's building a boat now. He's beautiful. He's gracious. He's the best man I've loved in a long while."

[summerdude]

"Oh, boat guy!" Magnus says, hiding a grin at the sappy aura Sagramore has started projecting. "Laertes, right? I met him. He knew more about my, um, world? Than anyone else I've met here so far. He's cool."

[sagramore]

"Laertes," his expression warming. "Aye, Laertes. Jesu, he knows everything, he's always reading."

[summerdude]

"You really like him, huh?"

[sagramore]

"I've had a great many lovers but few, if any, like him. He's something unto himself. I meant to stay here since I came, but now--" An expressive shrug. "If he left, I'd follow him."

[summerdude]

"Oh, so it's serious." There's a teasing note to Magnus's voice--mostly because he's decided Sagramore is a friend, and he likes to tease his friends when they're being particularly soppy. "Congrats, man."

[sagramore]

"Ah, Christ," laughing. "Speak on your Alex, then."

[summerdude]

"Alex is... the best," Magnus sighs. "She's a shapeshifter with green hair and a mean hand with a magical garrote. The day we met she beheaded me with it to save me from her mom. He also saved me from a bunch of wolves at my uncle's house by beheading them, too. Oh, also, this one time, she made a ceramic warrior to fight a giant and brought it to life. I helped," he adds. "But only with rolling out little coils of clay. Alex is trying to get me to learn more about pottery now, though. Since that day."

He pauses. "Your lover-boy actually did a really good synopsis of the story I told him about Alex."

[sagramore]

"Of course he did, he's a scholar," Sagramore says affectionately. "Your lover is both a man and a woman? Because of the shape-shifting?"

[summerdude]

"No, Alex being transgender and genderfluid is separate, actually," Magnus says. "The shapeshifting is a... characteristic that children of her mom share. The gender is all Alex."

[sagramore]

"What does that mean, transgender? I know gender is sex."

[summerdude]

"Um, sort of?" Magnus says. He's known trans people at least since his mom died, probably before, but Alex likes to be the one to explain her whole deal to people, so Magnus is a little out of practice. Especially when it comes to explaining this to people from actual Camelot. "Alex would say gender correlates with sex but they're different things. Transgender means that Alex's gender doesn't align with the sex she was assigned at birth. There are a lot of ways to be transgender? People who are assumed to be boys when they're born but they're actually girls all the time, or people who are assumed to be girls when they're born but they're actually boys all the time. And people who are both, or neither. Genderfluid, for Alex, means that sometimes she's a girl and sometimes he's a boy."